I saw
this lantern being removed on the morning of the 15th August 2003; however, I
didn't have time to stop and ask for it then, which was a shame, but at least, I
thought, there are still plenty of other gear-in-head MA 50s around, so all is
not lost. (It was replaced with a Thorn Alpha 4 using a lamp of the same
wattage.) Well, a few days later, Jeremy brought the lantern round, along with a
replacement ballast, as the existing one had failed - hence the reason for the
lantern's removal. He was planning to fit the new ballast without removing the
lantern, but was away when the work was carried out, and the repairman who was
instead given the job couldn't find the replacement ballast, so he just changed the
lantern over. A date written inside the MA 50 shows that the lantern was
installed in April 1998 - not really the 25 year life expectancy!

UPDATE
- The Alpha 4 itself has now been replaced! I first noticed this change on the
morning of Monday, 21st February 2005. The new lantern is a Thorn Alpha 8,
running a SON-T lamp. The only reason that I can think of for the Alpha 4's
replacement is that it is near a Zebra Crossing and so better colour rendering
might be required for motorists to see pedestrians crossing the road. The next
column on from this, a sleeved 10 m Stanton, has also had an Alpha 8 fitted,
replacing a
gear-in-base MA 50. The second Alpha 8 was saved into
my collection in May 2011.

The MA 50,
photographed shortly after the replacement ballast had been fitted. It is a very
long lantern - easily as long as the radiator behind it.

The
gear components are well spread out on the gear tray - this is because the
lantern body is also used to accommodate a 180 W SOX lamp in the MA 60, and the
135 W lamp of an MA 50 is sufficiently short enough to allow this amount of
space. I have
disconnected the photocell socket, in order that the lantern will run permanently
unless switched off at the mains. What can't be shown here is the dreadful smell
that greets you when you open the bowl - it is like chemicals that have gone off
(if you know what that smells like!). Underneath the ballast is a dried
substance - this is what is giving off the smell. I suspect that the substance
may have leaked out of the ballast - probably the reason that the ballast
failed. Some of the substance has leaked onto the bowl - I will endeavour to
remove it when I clean the lantern up.

The lantern has
been fitted with a brand new 135 W SOX lamp, so the warm up time is fairly quick
at present. In fact, on first ignition, the blobs of sodium in the arc tube's
dimples glowed before the rest of the arc tube became evenly yellow - it looked
amazing!

The MA 50 was cleaned and the
canopy and shoe repainted on Friday, 8th July 2005. Surprisingly, the substance
could not be removed from the bowl, but it isn't really that noticeable, so I
will leave it now. The canopy was painted in order to cover up some thick
scratches in the GRP, and also to prevent the fibres in the material from being
released.

Due to the length of the lantern,
photographing it sideways-on in one go is difficult. This is the best that I
could do: photograph the front and back ends separately and then join them
together on-screen, using the middle clip as a reference.

These views of the canopy were
more successful, however:

I guess this must be how the
lantern looked when it was installed in April 1998!

The lantern was mounted to an AC
Ford AC872 wall bracket on Wednesday, 10th August 2005.

Lantern warm-up video:

The following couple of pictures
show where the MA 50 was installed. An
Alpha 4 originally replaced the lantern, but
this in turn was replaced with an Alpha 8 to provide better colour rendering for
the nearby Zebra Crossing. The neighbouring MA 50 shows how mine would have
looked when in situ.